


The Haunts of Daily Life

by tristesses



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bondage, Choking, Claustrophobia, Consentacles, Dirty Talk, Double Penetration, Drowning, F/F, Haunted Houses, Identity Porn, Light Dom/sub, PG-13 Violence, Past Childhood Bullying, Pet Names, Porn With Plot, Rough Sex, Spanking, Superheroes, Supervillains, Tentacles, ToT: Monster Mash, Torture, Vibrators, book clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:24:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8421703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: During the day, Amethyst is a not-so-mild-mannered scientist having a torrid affair with the head of her book club. At night, she is the superhero Cipher, ridding the world of evil one supervillain at a time. And those two worlds will never meet. Right?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fenellaevangela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/gifts).



> My first draft was 4000 words. How did we get from there to here? I don't even know. fenellaevangela, I hope you enjoy this!

**i. The League of Lady-Lovin’ Literature Lovers**

"This month," Miranda said, a self-satisfied smile curling her mouth, "we will be reading _Giving An Account of Oneself_ by Judith Butler."

She presided over the group like a lion over its pride. ( _Or maybe,_ Amethyst thought uncharitably, _like a prison warden over her charges_ ). She held up a copy of the book—thick as a brick, brand new with a price tag sticker on its cover. Because of course Miranda shopped in brick-and-mortar stores still. She rotated on the spot to make sure everyone crowded into the little alcove of the coffee shop could see.

"It's an in-depth critique of the moral self," she continued, "and I expect you all to take the time to examine your own biases—“

Amethyst didn't audibly groan or bang her head on the table, but she did tune out. The members of the League of Lady-Lovin' Literature Lovers (or L5, as Amethyst liked to put it) were listening to Miranda, rapt—even Amethyst had to admit the woman was charismatic—but Amethyst herself was slowly glazing over as Miranda's southern drawl washed over the group.

See, most people, when it was their turn to choose a book, opted for something more...accessible. Less academic. Some people might enjoy books so loaded with buzzwords you could drown in them, but L5 wasn't really the place for it.

Anyway, Amethyst's turn was in two months, and she already had her book picked out: a combo of her two favorite things, historical fiction and detective stories. Miranda would roll her eyes and say something snide at Amethyst's lack of taste, but Miranda, frankly, could go fuck herself.

Not that she was biased or anything.

" —and while I don't require you to take notes, it'll improve the quality of the discussion next month if you do." Miranda flashed them a lovely, genuine smile, her white teeth glowing against her dark skin. "See y'all on the fifth!"

The rustle of a dozen people moving for the first time in an hour filled the room as everyone pushed away from their tables and couches, coalescing into pairs and trios, ready to go out into the real world. That was one thing Amethyst loved about the club, Miranda notwithstanding; ensconced in the coffee shop, surrounded by like-minded book lovers, Amethyst could pretend that she was a normal person, living a normal life completely free of supervillains, chaos, and mass murder, instead of what she was.

When she looked at it like that, it was easy to tolerate Miranda, even (god forbid) be fond of her: a little arrogant, very bossy, whip-smart, and easy to bait. The sort of adversary Amethyst's daytime self deserved.

"Amethyst!" Miranda called before Amethyst could hoist her bag on her shoulder and slink away. "Have a sec for a little chat?"

Amethyst did not, in fact, have time for a little chat. She was due on patrol in two and a half hours, and she’d planned to get a bite to eat and relax a bit before she wriggled into her costume (specially reinforced to protect her against bullets, knives, and flame, although the effort required to put the damn thing on was inconvenient). But Miranda was standing there, tall and rangy, all dark curls and dimples, looking at Amethyst with a challenge in her eyes, and Amethyst knew what that implied. A frisson of anticipation ran down her spine. Maybe she could spare a _little_ time, since Miranda was clearly spoiling for a fight.

So when Amethyst joined her, she held her head high and gave Miranda a lazy once-over, the picture of indifference. She could play games, too.

"What is it?" she asked, purposefully blunt. Miranda made a moue of distaste at her impoliteness, but recovered quickly.

"I noticed you weren't too impressed with my choice of reading material," Miranda said with a little sneer. "Something wrong with Butler, darlin'?"

"Don't call me that," Amethyst said automatically, although she knew Miranda wouldn't stop. Amethyst was pretty sure she did it just to annoy her; those cliché Southern pet names were reserved for Amethyst. "And no, I can't say I _was_ too impressed. Butler, really? Does anyone but ivory tower academics even read that?"

Miranda's tiny smirk grew a little more fixed. There was nothing she hated more than being told she, a trust fund baby in the extreme, wasn't familiar with the plight of the common people. (And sure, non-academics were interested in Butler, but there was no fun in agreeing with Miranda.)

"Well, obviously some do," she said frostily. "And might I remind you that _you_ also were an academic, once upon a time?"

"If you count going to college at all as academia, sure. But my degree is actually useful." Amethyst tapped her index finger against her chin thoughtfully. "Computer engineering versus...what was your major again? Puppetry or something?"

"I went to _Yale,_ " Miranda spat. “I graduated _summa cum laude._ But _you_ went to a state school, didn't you? Whatever you could afford?" She wrinkled her nose in disgust. It would've been cute on a different person; on Miranda, Amethyst just wanted to slap it off her face. “I don't see how you have any room to talk."

Amethyst shrugged. She didn't have much pride tangled up in her education; she'd learned what she needed to know for her job (and for her _other_ work), and that was that.

"Still don't think Butler is a good choice," she repeated.

"If you think my choice was so terrible, maybe you should try to engage in a _well-reasoned debate_ instead of just insulting me—“

Amethyst laughed, a derisive cackle that made Miranda stop mid-sentence to glare.

“A well-reasoned debate,” she said. “Right.” She stepped closer, crowding Miranda against a turquoise Formica table, still home to a single coffee cup. Amethyst noted this distantly; she was too focused on Miranda’s widening eyes, the quick rise and fall of her breasts, the way she bit her lip.

This was the other great thing about the book club: after hours, when the coffee shop was empty, she and Miranda sometimes had little chats like this one. They had an _arrangement._

And tonight, Miranda was clearly starving for it.

“You look so angry!” Amethyst said, and gave Miranda a mocking glare. The other woman flushed dark, her eyes narrowing. “If you were a dog, you’d have your hackles raised.”

Miranda was struggling to find the words to express her outrage. Amethyst couldn’t have that.

One hand on Miranda’s chest, and before she could swat it off, Amethyst pushed; Miranda tripped and sprawled against the table, limbs akimbo, and Amethyst pounced on her, caging her in with her arms and one knee shoved between Miranda’s thighs. The coffee cup wobbled and fell off the table. Silence fell after it shattered, punctuated only by Amethyst’s panting and the sound of Miranda squirming, rubbing herself against Amethyst’s knee and trying (and failing) to be discreet about it.

“Like a dog,” Amethyst repeated. She chuckled softly. “Maybe you should _beg_ like one _._ ”

“Make me,” Miranda hissed.

Amethyst smacked her across the face, hard—Miranda liked it like that, wanted it to hurt, to leave bruises she’d have to cover up with makeup the next morning—and said with a sneer, “I’ve been wanting to slap that smirk off your face all day.”

“Do it again,” Miranda ordered. She was flustered; her smooth skin was already redder, her hair messy, but here she was, being demanding. _Entitled._

“Ask nicely,” Amethyst said, and Miranda snapped, “Fuck you.”

But Amethyst slapped her again anyway, and when Miranda tried to turn her head, Amethyst grabbed her face, fingers digging into her jaw, and kissed her. Miranda’s hands clawed at her shoulders; Miranda’s legs wrapped around her hips, pulling her closer. Amethyst snaked a hand up her skirt, trying to tug it up past her hips, but it clung too closely to her thighs.

“Why do you wear such fucking impractical clothes?” she mumbled into Miranda’s mouth.

“Just because _you_ don’t go to a tailor—“ Miranda began, but Amethyst cut her off, biting her lip _hard_. She swallowed Miranda’s yelp with kisses, then curled her hand in Miranda’s hair and wrenched her head back.

“You want me to mark you up?” she panted, scraping her teeth along Miranda’s throat. “You want me to—“

“ _Yes,_ ” Miranda moaned, “yes, please, hurt me, make me feel it tomorrow—“

 _Jesus fuck,_ Amethyst thought, and sucked bruises down Miranda’s neck. Blood pounded in her ears; her entire world had narrowed down to this room, this woman, Miranda gasping and moaning beneath her. She wanted to _destroy_ her, bite her, fuck her, make her come until she couldn’t stand. Amethyst was dripping wet at the thought, could feel her own arousal soaking her underwear. And she _would_ do all that; Amethyst was a predator and Miranda her prey.

“Come on, then,” she said, and yanked Miranda to her feet. She flipped her around, Miranda compliant as if she let Amethyst manhandle her every day, and shoved her down, her torso flat against the table and her ass in the air. Amethyst went for the zipper on Miranda’s orange dress, tugged it down until a long stripe of Miranda’s dark skin was revealed. “Help me out here, take it off—“

Miranda frantically wriggled out of the dress—yeah, she was nice and obedient _now_ —shoving down the straps and letting the whole thing drop to the floor. Just in her bra and panties then (and panties was the only word for that lacy scrap of black fabric she wore, not something normal people would wear on a daily basis; she’d planned for this).

“Keep your hands flat against the table,” Amethyst instructed, and watched as Miranda instantly obeyed. She was almost lightheaded with the rush. Such a power trip. “You want to feel this tomorrow, huh?”

“Yes—“ 

“Want to remember being bent over a table in a public coffee shop, getting spanked and loving it, every time you sit down?”

“ _Yes—“_

“Then beg for it.”

“ _Please!_ ” Miranda begged, “Amethyst, please, I need it, I need it—“

Amethyst smacked her ass, did it again and again until her hand was stinging and Miranda was writhing under her, laughing crazily like a fucking supervillain. She always did this when she was the bottom, and whenever Amethyst heard it, she knew she was ready for more.

But not quite yet. Miranda hadn’t begged nearly enough for Amethyst’s tastes. She didn’t deserve to come.

Amethyst kicked Miranda’s legs apart, spreading them wide enough to give her access to her cunt. Miranda gasped and her back arched in anticipation, but Amethyst was patient; she waited until Miranda started whining, then spanked her cunt over her panties just like she’d done to her ass. Miranda’s cry was—well, it did things to Amethyst. She was pressing her own thighs together, craving friction, and the noises Miranda was making were enough to make her change her mind about patience.

“Get on your back again,” she ordered, and though Miranda whined in desperation, she did it. “Scoot up, lay on the table.”

“Oh,” Miranda said. “ _Oh.”_

Amethyst snorted as she kicked her shoes off and peeled herself out of her jeans and underwear. “Yeah. You know what’s going to happen.”

God, what a delicious sight: Miranda sprawled out across the table, half-naked, panting, a sheen of sweat on her skin, looking at Amethyst with beseeching eyes.

“Please,” she said without being told. “Please sit on my face, Amethyst, I want to taste you—“

“Well, shit,” Amethyst said. “Since you asked so nicely,” and hopped onto the table.

She braced her knees on either side of Miranda’s head, but Miranda surged forward before Amethyst could properly sit, eagerly lapping at her cunt, grabbing her hips and pulling her down firmly against her face. Lips curled around Amethyst’s clit, she sucked lightly, and Amethyst inhaled so sharply it sounded like a squeak, and ground down hard against Miranda’s face.

“You’re so good at this,” she gasped, and Miranda groaned at the praise, craning her neck to lick inside Amethyst, then dragging her tongue up Amethyst’s cunt to swirl around her clit again. “So good—knew you would be when I saw you, look at that pretty mouth—“ 

Miranda loved the praise, ate it up with the same enthusiasm she ate out Amethyst. Her grip on Amethyst’s hips tightened, her long nails digging into Amethyst’s skin—fuck, that was good. And when Miranda kissed her clit like that, licking and sucking— _that_ was good, and Amethyst was making weird little gasps and grunts as she rode Miranda’s face, and she blushed all over and her muscles tensed, thighs clamping down hard around Miranda’s head, and— _fuck—_

Someone was moaning loudly. Amethyst was pretty sure it was her. The orgasm rolled through her and she disconnected from the world, focusing on nothing but Miranda’s mouth on her cunt.

The spasms started to fade, and Amethyst, gasping, swung off Miranda’s face and nearly collapsed next to the table. Miranda always left her like this, weak-legged and shaky. In a way she almost resented it, being forced into vulnerability, but hey. Worth it.

When she was coherent enough to recognize the world around her, she realized Miranda was resting on her elbows, still on the table, looking cross. The entire lower half of her face glistened, and something in Amethyst twisted in pleasure when she considered that Miranda, usually so fastidious, didn’t bother to—didn’t want to?—wipe Amethyst’s come off her face.

“What about me?” she whined, and Amethyst snorted.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, and grabbed Miranda’s ankle, tugging her to the edge of the table. “I wouldn’t leave you hanging.”

(She would, if Miranda was into that, if they were the kind of people who acknowledged each other as anything other than irritating acquaintances outside of these little assignations. But they weren’t. The thought flicked through her head and was easily dismissed.)

Instead of teasing her, she pushed Miranda’s legs wider until she was spread out like a feast before Amethyst’s waiting mouth. Amethyst dropped kisses on her thighs, dancing around the scrap of wet black lace between her legs—just a little nuzzle here, a flick of the tongue there, never peeling back the lace panties or even licking her through them—until Miranda whined. Her hands twitched as if she wanted to grab Amethyst’s head, put her where she wanted, but she didn’t. Now _that_ deserved a reward. Amethyst delivered it in the form of a bite to Miranda’s inner thigh, hard enough to leave a mark and jolt a little shriek from her, then yanked the lace panties aside and buried her face in Miranda’s cunt.

Heaven. It was heaven, wet and hot, a little sweet, a little tangy, and Amethyst took her time with Miranda, sucking on her lips, toying with her clit with her tongue and a finger until Miranda arched her back and tried to grind her cunt into Amethyst’s face. Amethyst held her down by the hips and licked into her until all she could taste was Miranda. God, she was _such_ a dyke. No taste better than this.

Miranda was sobbing now, little choked cries that maybe could’ve been pleas if she could enunciate well enough for it. Amethyst, as always, took a little pride in reducing Miranda to this whimpering, pleading wreck.

“You can do it,” she murmured, and slipped a finger into Miranda, then another. Miranda nearly shrieked, her hips pushing forward to take more. Amethyst’s fingers weren’t quite long enough to satisfy, but when she started rubbing Miranda’s clit with her thumb and curling her fingers to hit just that spot Miranda loved, it didn’t matter. “Come on, come all over my hand and my face, you little slut—“

She had no idea where that last part came from—it wasn’t usually her thing—but Miranda said “Oh my god” in a shocked voice, grabbed Amethyst’s head, and crushed it against her cunt while her entire body tensed and released, tensed and released. Amethyst’s fingers were trapped in a velvet vise, she couldn’t breathe, Miranda’s grip on her head hurt, and it was _perfect._

When Miranda’s twitching was done, Amethyst leaned back and wiped her face off with the back of her hand.

“So,” she said. “Into name-calling, huh?”

“Shut up,” said Miranda, still a little out of breath. “I’m sure you would never.”

When she considered it, Amethyst is pretty sure she would be into it. Miranda, cooing at her and calling her a slut while she worked her over with a strap-on—yeah.

“Not from _you_ ,” she said. It was a silly fantasy anyway; they never hooked up anywhere a strap-on would be realistic. She groped around for her jeans, absent-mindedly tugged them on before realizing she’d dropped her underwear. Whatever. She shoved them in her pocket and looked for her shoes.

“Zip me?” Miranda asked, halfway in her dress. She turned around and lifted her hair out of the way; Amethyst obediently pulled up the zipper, wanting to drop a kiss on Miranda’s elegant neck, knowing it would cross the line. Instead, she turned away and grabbed her bag.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Miranda asked, right as Amethyst’s phone buzzed.

“Um,” Amethyst said. There were three notifications waiting for her.

 

**From: MM**

Can u come by now

 

**From: MM**

Could really use ur help

 

**From: MM**

Unexpected villain sighted

 

Unexpected villain? Amethyst ran through the short list of possible candidates: Xenoa (lost in space but could’ve returned), Nightmare (not usually active during the waxing moon), Titan (in lockup). Who else? 

“Sorry," she said absently, processing the question a few seconds late. "Gotta go."

"Fine," said Miranda, after a little pause. She straightened her dress, which was already perfectly draped. “See you next month."

But Amethyst was already walking away.

 

 

 

  **ii. Interlude: Mutation Blues**

 

No one can ignore their mutation. Even if it's inconvenient, even if you end up ostracized because of it, even if it loses you friends and loved ones and destroys you in the process, you have to deal with it. It's why so many mutants take up heroing (or its opposite)—the alternative is to pray your mutation is useful in the mundane world, or suppress it and let it eat you alive.

This was something Amethyst had had to learn for herself. Mutants were not common where she grew up, considered pitiable freaks at best and godless abominations at worst, and the weird little girl who tore apart computers to lay her hands on the circuit board, claiming to be able to _speak_ to it, who sparked when she was angry and always crackled with static electricity, was not exactly popular among her peers. They had tried to beat it out of her, but she kept control, never hurt anyone. They had tormented her with insults and threats; she ignored them and withdrew, closing her eyes and listening to the data carried in the network packets traveling around her. Then—

Then they’d gone too far. They'd grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to a bucket of water, chanting prayers, then shoved her face in and held her there. Waterboarding as baptism.

Amethyst had screamed, inhaling water, electricity jolting on her skin, and put the boy holding her down in the ICU.

The next few years had been a flood of medication, therapy, and behavioral exercises. She'd been dutiful: she'd obeyed her doctors, swallowed her pills, meditated on the awful truth of her mutation and how she had to ignore it, _had_ to, or she would kill someone. She had fixated on that; she was a kind person, a well-behaved young lady. She couldn't be a murderer, she _had to be good._ And if she couldn't think through the haze of the drugs, if she spent her days listless and hoping to die, with the desire—no, the _need—_ to slip into the world of code and electricity buzzing under her skin like angry wasps, then so what?

They had determined her cured at fifteen. She wasn't. She'd left her home at eighteen with a clear head and a serious problem with authority figures. Applied for financial aid, went to school, and let her mutation run wild as she plugged away at her coursework. Computer engineering, the wedding of the two aspects of her mutation. She spent her spare time learning to sweet-talk software into doing what she wanted—accessing restricted databases, cracking into banks, reading classified government emails, all without leaving a trace. Life was good. Life was simple. Her mutation still hummed under her skin, wanting to be used to greater ends, but it was tolerable.

And then she met Metamorph.

Then she became Cipher.

 

 

 

**iii. And his name that sat upon him was Death**

 

"Pale Horse is squatting in the penthouse to the north," Metamorph said without preamble as soon as Cipher silently slid to her side. "Nice of you to join us."

It had taken Cipher forty-five minutes to eat an energy bar, scramble into her costume, and join Metamorph on the roof of the apartment complex where she was perched.

"Sorry," Cipher said. "I was at a meeting." (What had Miranda said at the end there? No, that was Amethyst's life; Cipher had to focus.) "What's he up to?"

"Killed the family living there," Metamorph said. Her face twisted as she added, "Kept the kids alive for a while. Fed off their energy. One of 'em escaped and told a neighbor a bad man was hurting them. I knew from the description who he was."

"Shit," Cipher breathed. A shiver went down her spine. She could practically hear the kid's voice in her head. _A bad man is hurting us._ "That's bold. Does he really think he can get away with it?"

"Police aren't on it yet. And years in solitary can fuck up your perception of reality." Metamorph shook her head. "Disgusting. Should focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. There are ways to control his mutation."

Privately, Cipher thought she'd rather die than allow her mutation to be imprisoned again, even if it was as extreme as bringing death to whoever she touched. Anyway, it was obvious the Pale Horse enjoyed what he did; he wouldn't be down for rehabilitation. She knew better than to voice that to Metamorph.

Delicately, she said instead, "Going after children is a step too far. His mutation might be controllable, but the man isn't."

Metamorph turned to look at her. Cipher made herself meet her eyes. Metamorph in her true form was hard to look at, like a clay approximation of a human being, skin a uniform shade of beige. She had no particular preference for any shape, race, or gender; Cipher knew she only used female pronouns because she'd been a girl before her mutation surfaced.

"You're right," Metamorph said after a long period of silence. There was a shade of regret in her voice; the Pale Horse was her nemesis, the supervillain only she could handle, and they'd been locked in a stalemate for years, neither of them quite willing to end it for real. They— _they_ being the superhero community—said that could happen sometimes, a hatred so intense it twisted into a kind of love. Cipher wondered sometimes if she'd ever feel that.

But Metamorph squared her shoulders and raised her chin. "We have to take him down."

Cipher agreed, but she suspected her definition of "take him down" was a bit broader than Metamorph's.

"Plan of attack?" she asked. It was so easy to slip into Metamorph's habit of dropping subjects and the beginnings of sentences. "I think it would be easiest to go at it from the penthouse windows. You take the east side—“ There were windows that opened a crack there, she knew from breaking and entering in similar buildings. “—and I'll do the…" 

"North," Metamorph said. "Cut him off from the front door."

"Sounds good," Cipher agreed. "I'll short out the lights and electrify the fire escape."

“Let’s go,” said Metamorph, and Cipher added, "Go team."

Metamorph gave her a severe look before jogging to the far side of the building. Cipher made it to the stairwell before she had to watch Metamorph fling herself off the roof, melting into a wide sail to ride the air currents to the Pale Horse's building. It was a useful mutation and Metamorph was a good person, but it creeped her the fuck out to watch.

Cipher's method of travel was a little more difficult. She ran down the stairs as fast as she could—luckily, being a hero put her in great shape—and made her way to the other building, keeping to the shadows. Anyone who saw the woman in a skintight yellow-and-black costume, complete with a full-face mask, chose not to comment.

She circled the building until she was facing its north side, and crouched in the darkness. Slowly, she drew upon the air around her until the electric charge was enough to raise the hairs on her arms. Without knowing why, people started avoiding the north side of the building, crossing the street to keep from walking in front of it.

 _Perfect_ , Cipher thought. She tugged on the electric field with her mind, and it was a delicious tingling _rightness_ , as if she were being made whole. Carefully, she increased the intensity of the field. It was dry out; sparks shone, then faded in the air, never quite enough to catch fire. And Cipher rose.

Up, up, ten floors, twenty floors - she reached the penthouse before maximum acceleration, though she was tempted, like always, to just keep going, cutting through the planet's atmosphere, see how high she could go.

But she had a job to do.

This sort of thing wasn't her favorite—she preferred speaking to the computers, a kind of friendly hacking, the skill that earned her her alias—but she'd done it enough to know the drill. Reach the main window, perch on the ledge. Break the window (with a car escape tool; using electricity would only give her melted glass), short out the lights and all other electronics, charge anything metal with enough electricity to make a man think twice about climbing out the fire escape or grabbing a knife. Easy.

So when she stepped through the shattered window, she wasn't expecting the Pale Horse to be waiting for her.

He grinned at her, a white man with white hair and a skeleton's leer, slouched in a chair in the center of the room. She had never seen him this close; Metamorph wouldn't let her get within grabbing range of him, this man who had cut a swath of death through the city with just the touch of his hand. She'd expected him to be just a man, human as anyone; instead there was a brittle, crawling quality to him, something insectile in the way he held himself, a human skin holding the plague of locusts within it.

At his side was a child, a boy, hogtied, sallow and terrified. The Pale Horse's hand hovered over his head, as if caught mid-pat.

"Cipher," the Pale Horse said. His voice was nothing but a rasp; he smelled like rot. "It's so nice to meet you at last. Why don't you come over here and sit next to me?"

Cipher licked her lips, suddenly dry. Other villains were just people, awful people using their mutations for evil. The Pale Horse in close quarters seemed less like a human and more like the true incarnation of Death.

"Wooden chair," she said, nodding in his direction. Too bad she couldn’t use it for much without hurting the boy. "Clever."

"You know you're going to die," he said conversationally. "Either you or Ethan here." He let his hand fall further, brushing the top of the boy's hair. Cipher jerked forward but stopped herself before she got too close. The Pale Horse laughed.

"You can't do anything and we both know it," he said. He was tugging lightly on Ethan's hair, which was just long enough to keep his hands away from Ethan's skin. "I know _her_ rules." (Metamorph's rules, of course; no one else could elicit that kind of poison in his voice.) "Will you watch me drain the life from him?"

"No,” Cipher whispered, and he cut her off.

"Will you be the one to carry his corpse to the morgue?" He started laughing again, the wheeze of the dying. "Or will you end up on the autopsy table too? You know there's no happy ending here for you."

Then, from the side of the room: “There can be."

Metamorph, oozing in from the east, her body melding back into a human form even as she spoke. The Pale Horse whipped around to look at her with those insectile eyes.

"You," he hissed, and Metamorph nodded. Cipher stood frozen, gaze flickering between the two of them as they stared each other down.

"Doesn't have to be like this," Metamorph said quietly. She stepped closer to him, her gaze intense. "Let him go, and I'll make sure you see justice, not a lynching."

The Pale Horse looked at Metamorph for another moment.

Then he laughed, high-pitched and whining, and lunged for Ethan. Grabbed him. Cipher saw this as if through a fog: Ethan struggling to wriggle away, his skin going gray as the Pale Horse dragged Ethan closer, holding him to the floor—

_The slosh of water in a bucket, hands pinning her down, mocking voices chanting prayers—_

Cipher shrieked and flung herself after him, knocked him off Ethan, felt his hands grip her arms and smelled the stench of death as he dragged the life from her, sucking it down like it was water. Weak, disoriented, shaking; nausea ripped through her, a migraine spiked in her skull. Cipher reached for the electricity humming through the metal in the room, in the sockets of the broken light bulbs, in the apartments below, the charged particles in the air itself. Held it in her hand, felt Metamorph wrapping her unnatural limbs around her back, trying to pull her off. Cipher looked down into the Pale Horse's eyes, and saw only fear.

"Good," she whispered, and put her hands over his heart—

The world pulsed—

Something was burning—

She opened her eyes. Metamorph was lying next to her, back in her true form. _So expressive, somehow,_ she thought dizzily. _She doesn’t even have a real face._

"He's gone,” Metamorph rasped. “The bastard can survive anything.”

Cipher raised her head and looked at where the Pale Horse had been: nothing but a scorch mark in the carpet _._

“The kid?” she asked, her voice about as wrecked as Metamorph’s. She’d knocked the Pale Horse off him before he died, she knew that. He’d be okay. Just unconscious.

But Metamorph was shaking her head.

“Too close to you,” she said quietly. “Electrocuted.”

Cipher didn’t even swear. She couldn’t put the words together; there was a boy, just a few minutes ago, alive and in danger. And now—

She craned her head to look for him, and caught a glimpse.

 _So that's the burning smell,_ she thought, hazy. She felt like she should be sick, or full of rage; she was not. She was empty.

She’d done this. His death was on her head. Cipher turned back to Metamorph, who was looking at her; the strange, half-formed face conveyed no expression.

"Good work," she said. “Next time we’ll get him.”

Cipher closed her eyes.

 

 

 

**iv. Binaries**

 

There had always been a distinct separation between Cipher and Amethyst. Cipher was methodical, collected; she was a deadly weapon and took care of where she was pointed. In contrast, Amethyst: brilliant, impulsive, kind of a bitch even to her friends. Cipher didn't expend any more effort than necessary in her movements, saving her energy for the exercise of her mutation. Amethyst could be still, but she liked to dance, keeping the beat as she walked, always bobbing her head to a song only she could hear. Cipher: a hero, the protagonist of every story. Amethyst: the movie scientist who fucked everything up. She'd always thought she was a binary creature, always either a zero or a one. Turned out that wasn't quite the case.

After the Pale Horse incident, Amethyst found that the lines between Cipher and her mundane self had blurred. Three weeks went by before she could fully switch back to Amethyst. She spent that time in a haze, dreaming about the smoke rising from Ethan’s body, Metamorph saying _Good work,_ and maybe even meaning it _._ Her costume had made it through the fight without damage, of course, so she stuck it in the bottom of her bag just in case. (Just in case what? If a villain appeared at her lab or jumped her while she walked down the street, it wasn't like she could politely ask it for ten minutes to put the damn thing on.)

She kept an eye out for Metamorph while she was walking to work; she kept her finger on the pulse of the hero network for any news, sometimes charming the servers to regurgitate emails passed between the top brass in the network. (No encryption could withstand Cipher.) No news. Amethyst grew a little jumpy, started freaking out her coworkers with her intensity. She skipped the L5 meeting, and ignored the snippy texts from Miranda, except the last one: _I see that Butler was a little much for you. Next week, we're reading a book about the Mongols. If you check your email, you'll find the author and ISBN. If you aren't going to be at the meeting, please let me know not to expect you._

Perfect grammar, of course. Amethyst found herself grinning at her phone. The text was actually kind of sweet, although Amethyst couldn't tell if Miranda was worried or irritated. Probably the latter. Still, it was nice to be missed. She checked the book out of the library, and put the incident with the Pale Horse out of her mind. (It wasn’t her fault—wasn’t her— _Cipher_ did it, she wasn’t to blame—)

As long as she was awake, it was easy. The bad dreams only came at night. She was just Amethyst again. Cipher was dead. It was tolerable.

Of course, it couldn't last.

The interruption to Amethyst's very tolerable life was entirely due to her nosiness, and came in the form of an encrypted file sent from the president of the Heroes' Guild (the official version of the hero network) to the shadowy moderator of the hero network listserv. Breaking the encryption was a piece of cake, and the file itself, an official briefing on a threat, was worth it.

_ALIAS: Nightmare_

_MUTATION: Psionic Class V_

“Jesus,” Amethyst muttered to herself. A Class V psionic? Amethyst knew Nightmare was powerful, but not _that_ powerful.

_MANIFESTATIONS: Telepathic projection, perception manipulation_

_ALIGNMENT: Enemy_

Amethyst skimmed the bulk of the document; most of the information she already knew, but some details jumped out at her. _Victims chosen at random…no apparent motive…induces hallucinations and manipulates sensory input…active only during the waning moon…_

This wasn’t the full story. Amethyst had heard the rumors: Nightmare could make you see things. Not general hallucinations, oh no; she could reach into your head and pluck out your darkest thoughts and fears, and put them on display in front of you. She could control all your senses; she could lock you in a permanent dream state, fighting demons only you could see; she could make you see your best friend as your worst enemy, and watch you destroy them. She'd done all that and more, and according to the Heroes’ Guild, apparently had no motive whatsoever.

That wasn't new; there were always going to be a few psychopaths among both villains and heroes, people who only wanted to hurt other people and get away with it. But they, for whatever reason, were never very powerful, and their cohorts tended to put them down quickly; there was a code of honor that dictated interactions between all villains and heroes, and the psychopaths never could be trusted. Nightmare, though... _that_ was a mutation unlike anything Amethyst had ever seen. Something different. Something new.

Her costume was in her bag. Amethyst itched to put it on, feeling a little naked without it. But she'd given up heroing, she reminded herself; she was just Amethyst now.

She pulled up a lunar calendar anyway. Tonight the moon was waning gibbous. Like an automaton, she stood and went to her purse.

"This is stupid," she told herself as she tugged the costume from the bag. It spilled into her hands, the silky material sliding over her skin. In her head, she found half a memory from her childhood of someone telling her how to tell the moon phases: put a line down the middle of the moon, and if it formed a b, it was a baby, waxing; if it was a d, it was waning. The dying moon.

"I'm not doing it," she said firmly. The costume was shoved in the corner of her closet, to be neglected forevermore, amen. It stayed there as the month faded, August to September. She locked herself in her apartment on the dark moon and got absolutely shitfaced; Nightmare was too strong, the risk too great. She had some semblance of self-control. Seriously.

**. . .**

September faded into October. Amethyst had taken to going on long walks at night, around her neighborhood and into unknown parts of the city - and why shouldn't she? Without the option of heroing, she needed a different way to get exercise, and if she maybe forayed a bit into vigilantism...well, she was just keeping her mutation in shape.

 

 

 

**v. The Hunt**

 

A waning crescent moon hung low in the sky: death would come for it soon. Grey clouds floated across its face like veils, and the wind had teeth. In other words, it was a perfectly cliche Halloween evening, and Amethyst was on the prowl. 

She’d wended her way from her neighborhood, bustling with little kids in costumes yelling about candy, through downtown, swarming with costumed children and wasted adults alike, past the industrial sector (thankfully party-free), and found herself on the outskirts of the Old District, the abandoned remnants of the original town with its looming ramshackle houses and overgrown gardens. Amethyst paused on the street corner, and considered.

There was never much of anything going on in the Old District. Teenagers snuck in there, played pranks on each other, tried to summon demons or whatever goth-inclined teens did with their spare time, and there were always squatters in the unstable buildings, but not the kind of person Amethyst was after when she went on her nighttime jaunts. Not violent people.

And yet.

And yet, there was a niggling urge she couldn’t ignore to go into the Old District, to explore those decaying houses. There was a dream she’d been having since her encounter with the Pale Horse, a dream of an old Georgian house, moderately sized, made of worn brick. White frames on the windows. A circular window, also rimmed in white, on the second floor, and peering out of it, a face with misshapen features and a wide, black mouth, looking around, looking for _Amethyst_ —

And then Amethyst would wake up, covered in sweat, and stumble down the stairs and outside to look at her apartment complex and the buildings around it, a mix of styles from brutalist to postmodern. When she finally slept again, there were no dreams.

It could have been coincidence that the Old District was mainly populated by American Colonial-style architecture. There was always a chance that Amethyst saw a house and used the image in her dreams, an expression of some deep-seated anxiety—after all, the Pale Horse was still at large, Nightmare was moving in the shadows, and Metamorph had dropped off the radar; she sure as _fuck_ had some things to be anxious about. But Amethyst had instincts, good instincts—how else would she have stayed alive this long, doing what she did?—and she knew better. There was some shred of truth to her dream; there was a house in the Old District waiting for her to find it.

She should have brought her costume. Instead, all she had in the way of protection was a leather motorcycle jacket and a pair of work boots.

 _Bad life choices,_ she thought to herself. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. It wasn’t from the cold. The street sign for the road leading into the Old District was so weathered it was unreadable; the road itself was bumpy and malformed, the asphalt a victim of the area’s unstable foundation. Shadows swirled at the end of the path. The house was waiting.

“Well,” she muttered, “’tis the season for haunted houses,” and stepped onto the road.

Something was immediately wrong; Amethyst heard it in the way the sounds of the city muted as soon as she crossed the threshold from the city street to this one, tasted it in the scent of rotting wood sitting heavy on her tongue. The shadows were darker here.

She found herself wandering down the street, under the watchful gaze of the empty windows of the great old houses. Take the first left, walk two blocks, take a right, walk four blocks. She moved as if by instinct, formless thoughts floating through her head, every hair on her body standing on end like she’d crafted an electric field without noticing. There was, she mused, a tension that lived in all prey animals, an alertness that kept them constantly on guard, kept them alive. She felt rather like prey herself tonight.

And so she walked. She let her feet move without directing them to do so; in her head, she saw flashes of the house, the creature that lurked in its upper story. It was guiding her, she knew. Guiding her to it. And was she going to walk into its trap, like an insect lured in by a Venus flytrap? Was she really that stupid?

Of course not. But she _was_ curious. And oddly compelled.

(In retrospect, that should have been her first clue to the mystery of what lay within that house.)

Then the house was before her, and she stood stock-still before it, shocked. She had never been in this part of town; she knew it for a fact, but the house in front of her was not just similar to the one in her dreams. It _was_ the house from her dreams. Same brick, same garden full of half-dead weeds, the stakes for tomato plants poking out of the soil like gravestones. Same huge willow casting its boughs over the house. Same second-story window—Amethyst forced herself to look at it, dreading what she might see, but there was nothing. For some reason, that put her even more on edge; if the creature wasn’t in the window, where _was_ it?

“Doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “You saw the house. You know it exists. Get out of here.”

Yes, time to leave. She turned away from the house—and something pinched inside her brain, hooked her like a fish and _tugged._ She watched, horrified, as she pivoted and went back to the house, a spectator in her own body. Up the cracked concrete steps—she knew every jagged crack in the pathway as surely as if she lived there—to the sagging door, once white but now caked with dirt and mold. Her hands were steady as she put her hand on the knob— _no, no, stop, fucking stop_ —pulled the door open— _please no—_ stepped inside. The door caught a draft ( _did it really?_ ) and slammed shut behind her. Just as suddenly as it had hooked her, the force manipulating her body let her go. Amethyst stumbled as control was given back to her, her breath suddenly exploding in her chest. She flung herself against the door, grabbed the handle and pulled. Nothing. Well, drastic times call for drastic measures, and if she burned the District to the ground, so be it. She put her hand on the wooden door, summoned all her power, and sent a pulse of electricity strong enough to set a person on fire rolling through it.

The door remained unharmed.

“Fuck,” she said to herself. “ _Fuck._ ”

It was fine. She was fine. She just had to find a new way out. Slowly, she turned around until her back was pressed against the door, and looked into the depths of the house. No light except the thin glow of the city weakly shining through the windows, but she could fix that. She snapped and a spark lit in her hands, arcing between her fingertips until she held a little lightning storm in her palm. The light it cast was shaky, but better than nothing. She was standing in a grand foyer, the ceiling tall and half-decayed, revealing a strip of dark sky clotted with leaves from the willow. Ahead of her, a hallway leading into a room she couldn’t see, and a staircase leading into blackness. ( _The creature in the second story—no, don’t think about it._ ) The room to her left, she saw, was empty; the one to her right was full of many different shades of shadow, dark upon light. She peered a little closer; as her vision adjusted, she thought she could see a couch and a small table, a couple chairs, one with a much taller back than the other. A living room? Or whatever the term would be—salon or something.

Satisfied with her investigation, Amethyst looked down the hallway. Unknown room or dark stairs?

Then, out of the corner of her eye—or maybe that prey instinct she was thinking about earlier kicked in—she saw movement. And the thing sitting in the taller chair _stood up._

She froze, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, as it straightened; too tall and disproportionate, its limbs too long and its body too thin, and then it looked at her, and its face—the thing from her nightmares—

Amethyst broke.

She shrieked, an animal sound full of terror, and ran for the staircase. Up, up—the thing loping behind her, each footstep a knife of fear in her heart—and then she hit the stairwell door. She scrambled at the handle, an old metal knob that jangled in her hand, and wrenched it open—flung herself through it, and slammed it shut. She was in the second story attic now— _trapped._ The window was in front of her, a circle like a hole in the universe, watching her. Waiting. The house had her now. 

Had she ever known fear like this before? Sure, she’d been scared, but not like this: not the kind of fear that choked her, lingered in her throat like a sob she couldn’t swallow, brought tears prickling to her eyes. Amethyst liked control, liked the knowledge of how perfectly she’d mastered her powers and her body. And something had taken that from her.

(— _they say there’s ghosts in the Old District—_ )

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Amethyst said to the window. She was shivering all over now, arms wrapped around her torso, nails digging into the leather of her jacket; she was hunched over and hyperventilating and—

 _Breathe, honey,_ said a voice in her head—Miranda’s voice? Why would she think of Miranda, of all people, in this situation? But the light drawl and slightly supercilious tone were unmistakable. _Deep breaths. Exhale first, then inhale on my count: one, two, three, four—_

Well, if her internal Miranda was the person her brain chose to help her, so be it. Amethyst followed her directions. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale.

 _Where are you?_ internal Miranda asked.

“In a house,” Amethyst whispered, throat dry. Grounding exercises, this sounded like, some bullshit used to ‘live in the moment’ or something along those lines. Her old therapist had mentioned them, once upon a time.

_Are you safe there?_

“No…”

A pause, then a shift in tone, her internal voice growing sharp. _Get to a safe place._

“I can’t.“ There was an ominous scratching at the door. Amethyst stumbled to the window on wobbly legs, pressed her hands and face against the glass. “Miranda, I can’t, there’s nowhere to go—“

God, she wished she was Cipher right now. Cipher would know what to do; Cipher wouldn’t be weeping at a window like a little kid whining for her mommy to help. Cipher would—

 _You’re Cipher?_ said internal Miranda, and several things happened at once.

One: the scratching at the door stopped. 

Two: the last remaining barriers between Amethyst and Cipher shattered.

Three: Amethyst realized the only way out was down.

“Wish me luck,” she said to internal Miranda.

_Wait, what?_

Amethyst ignored her; she put her hands back on the window, concentrated, obliterated it with a strike of unnatural lightning, and flung herself through the hole that remained. She hit the ground and rolled with the landing, though something cracked when she did, then dragged herself to her feet and ran like hell itself had opened up behind her.

**. . .**

_Evaluation of damage:_

_One leather jacket, irreparably pitted and damaged from melting glass._  

_At least two cracked ribs and a sprained ankle._

_Many miscellaneous scrapes and burns._  

_Eyes so swollen from crying I almost can’t see._

_No other damage. Physically, that is._

Every light in her apartment was on its brightest setting, her emergency candles burning. Their light reflected in her bathroom mirrors, but couldn’t distract Amethyst from the haunted look on her face, or the instinctive flinch she made every time someone on the street yelled or laughed.

At least the water was nice and hot. Amethyst should probably head down to urgent care instead of taking a bath, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of stepping a foot outside her apartment at night again. She’d go in the morning. For now, a bath for the stress and vodka for the pain would be enough. She groaned as she eased herself into the water, and reached for her drink—lime Smirnoff on the rocks in a plastic cup. Classy as always. But anything to distract herself from the utter fucking horror of encountering a _haunted house._ On Halloween, no less. A laugh burbled in her throat, then twisted into a full-on cackle as she sank lower in the water, slapping a hand over her face to quiet herself. She laughed until her throat hurt, then sobbed until everything hurt. 

“Ghosts and hauntings,” she said in a raspy voice, and vainly wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “What a fucking nightmare.”

She hadn’t even known ghosts were _real_ , but the proof was right there—

_What a nightmare._

“Fuck!” she yelped, and hauled herself out of the bath. “Stupid, stupid—get your shit together, Amethyst!”

Dripping water all over the place, she flopped down on the couch and flipped open her laptop, pulling up the heroes’ forum.

 

**Subj: Nightmare’s hunting grounds**

_Anyone know where Nightmare usually hangs out? Think I might have seen her tonight in the Old District. It’s a waning moon and everything_

 

She posted the thread, slammed her laptop shut, grabbed the vodka bottle, and went back to her bath, where she got supremely drunk. At some point she dried off and staggered to her bed, but she wasn’t aware of it until she woke up the next morning, hungry, gritty-eyed, and about as hungover as she had been drunk. 

“Too old for this,” she grunted, and rolled off the bed. Her screaming ribs sobered her up pretty quickly.

She’d gotten some replies to her forum post, although most of them were castigating her for not spilling the details of her possible encounter with Nightmare. But the few of substance were unanimous: yes, the Old District was Nightmare’s territory. Yes, she was active last night; in fact, rumor had it that she’d trapped a couple of teenagers in an abandoned house and tormented them until they collapsed.

So. Ghosts weren’t real, but Nightmares were.

“Way to start a war, asshole,” Amethyst muttered, and went to get her costume.

 

 

 

**vi. Interlude: Eclairs**

 

Baking was an art unappreciated by the masses. It was seen as kitschy, a fad relegated to cutesy reality TV and dismissed as the lesser cousin of cooking. Bakers were cheerful round women and men in flour-stained aprons, red-faced, handing out turnovers and pies out of the good of their hearts. A fluff hobby, really. Nothing to take seriously. 

Miranda knew better. Boxed brownies were one thing, but sculpting a dozen marzipan roses and lining them along the graceful curve of a frosted cake, handmade over a period of hours, was another. Baking required skill, dedication, precision. Baking was a blood sport: cuts on careless fingers, burns from dropped dishes striping the hands, sweat and strain and yes, tears, all hallmarks of the trade. And to those who thought all bakers were cheery, jolly people? Perhaps they needed to meet Miranda, flawless in her pencil skirt, flushed from the heat of the oven. Fresh from a night of playing cat-and-mouse with innocent people until they broke down in tears, clawing at their faces, begging her to stop. Miranda didn’t like it when they reached that point; it meant they were no longer useful as entertainment. She usually let them go, then, and if they snapped later and blamed her for it, any violence they committed wasn’t really _her_ fault. In the meantime, she’d wring whatever amusement out of them she could.

All except Amethyst. Cipher. Now _that_ had been a surprise, and Miranda wasn’t overly fond of surprises. She’d taken on the haunting of Cipher as a favor to an acquaintance who wanted to see her broken, but she was reconsidering now. She wasn’t fond of the idea of Amethyst, nightmare-ridden, trapped in Miranda’s lair, panicking and weeping like the lesser creatures she caught—but then, Amethyst didn’t break down like they did, did she? No psionic she, but Amethyst’s fear was strong enough to reach Miranda (whose telepathy often latched on to those she cared about without her knowing). She’d nearly fought her way through. Nearly. Poor Amethyst, stuck in a web she couldn’t escape. Miranda hadn’t expected herself to be the spider that wove it.

Amethyst, as it happened, was one of the few people in mundane life Miranda found truly _interesting._ Brilliant and infuriating, mouthy, gorgeous with her motorcycle jacket, no makeup but dyed blonde hair—she’d once described herself as a chapstick lesbian and Miranda had laughed—a woman with a steely inner core revealed only in small glimpses. Miranda had seen it in full twice, once when she confronted a man who had been pushing around his girlfriend in the street—her eyes gone cold, her posture straight, her fury practically sparking—and the first time she’d slapped Miranda, before Miranda had let out a soft moan and Amethyst’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t hit her out of lust, not that time, and that, more than the sex that followed, had intrigued Miranda. Amethyst was a fundamentally gentle person; where had that violence come from?

Well, now she knew. One didn’t become a hero (or a villain) without a certain taste for sadism.

On the counter, her phone chimed. Miranda made a face. She knew that ringtone, and if it were anyone else, she’d ignore them and return to making her eclairs. But as it was….She washed her hands briskly and picked up the phone.

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Hey Miranda_

_What book is L5 reading this month_

 

_**Miranda** _

_Nice to hear from you, sweetie. I wasn’t sure you were even participating in the League anymore. Where have you been?_

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Around_

_Busy_

 

_**Miranda** _

_Busy with what, exactly? Your illustrious computer job suddenly taking you away?_

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Look I’m not up to the snark today_

_Can you just tell me wht book we’re reading_

 

“Not up to the snark” was not a sentence she associated with Amethyst. Perhaps Nightmare had worn her out more than Miranda had thought.

 

_**Miranda** _

_We’re reading the Devil in White City, ISBN 9788375080261_

 

She paused. Hesitated, really. Then added, _What’s wrong?_

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Thanks. I’ll be there 11/5_

_It’s nothing, just someone at work hassling me_

 

Miranda tried to decide how to interpret that, and finally settled for:

 

_**Miranda** _

_Sounds like you have a nemesis._

 

Vague enough to relate to both Amethyst’s day job and her hero work. Amethyst took a long time to reply.

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Haha_

_Guess so_

_I’m gonna figure out a way to deal with her_

_But for now I’m really stressed_

 

_**Miranda** _

_If you’d like to come over before the meeting, we can see about relieving that stress._

_Here’s my address._

 

_**Amethyst** _

_Depends. You willing to work me over while I lay there and take it?_

 

A hot flush surged through Miranda. She could envision it perfectly, Amethyst draped on her bed (or her couch, or across the kitchen table), legs spread, naked and panting.

 

_**Miranda** _

_Come over and see._

 

_**Amethyst** _

_I’ll be there tomorrow_

_7pm_

_Got to figure out my plan for defeating my nemesis lol_

_She’s really fucked me up. Can’t let that slide_

 

_**Miranda** _

_Good luck. I’ll see you then._

 

Her nemesis. Who else could Amethyst mean but Nightmare?

Miranda drizzled white chocolate on the eclairs, tracing arabesques on the dark chocolate frosting. She didn’t consider herself an evil person, not really; she donated to charity, held the door open for strangers, baked food for the needy (so much for flouting those stereotypes). She contributed to society. That made her a worthwhile person, didn’t it? Would Amethyst think so?

Would Miranda care if she didn’t?

She finished her task and admired the eclairs. Beautiful, polished. Picking up a knife, she sank it deep into the pastry and watched the raspberry filling ooze out like blood. There was no point in questioning it; she wouldn’t change. She couldn’t. Miranda and Nightmare were inextricable; what else was she to do with her mutation but play games? She’d tried alternatives and found them wanting. No, that was a non-starter. Therefore she wouldn’t let herself care about Amethyst or what Amethyst might think of her. Final answer.

(She knew even then that she was lying.)

 

 

 

**vii. Closer**

 

Amethyst looked like hell and she knew it.

Before she’d left, she’d contemplated dressing up a bit. Makeup wasn’t her style, but maybe some bronzer would liven up her golden skin, turned sallow from days spent indoors and nights hunting Nightmare. The dark circles under her eyes looked bruised, more like she’d been in a fist fight than the typical raccoon eyes, and she had a constellation of acne on her chin. Lovely. And her blonde dye job was growing out, her natural dingy brown creeping out from the roots.

“Nah,” she said to the mirror, squinting at her reflection critically. It was just Miranda; it wasn’t like she _cared_ what she looked like or anything. Miranda merited a shower and a courtesy trim, and that was all. Obviously.

Well, she’d committed, and now she was standing outside Miranda’s house, as nervous as she’d been on prom night. Amethyst tucked back her hair, and knocked.

Miranda’s face when she opened the door made her glad she hadn’t dressed up. Hunger in Miranda’s eyes, something primitive and violent, before she smoothed over the expression with her typical look of faint disdain. Her lips were painted red, her dark curls bouncy and luxurious.

“Hey, darlin’,” she said, and stepped back. “Come in.”

“Uh, hey,” Amethyst said, and followed.

Three steps inside, and Miranda slammed the door and pinned Amethyst against the wall. Amethyst tilted her head back, opened her mouth for kisses, but Miranda only looked at her, studying her face with feverish eyes. Amethyst’s gaze locked on hers and stayed there. Miranda’s nails in her shoulders, the light scent of Miranda’s perfume in the air. She was drowning, drowning in the heat of Miranda’s dark eyes.

“Lovely,” Miranda pronounced, a growl in the back of her throat. She slid a hand from Amethyst’s shoulder to stroke gently down Amethyst’s cheek, then— _slap_ , very light, more of a scolding pat—then she grasped her jaw in a steely grip and said, “Aren’t you just the loveliest thing I ever did see?”

“Miranda,” Amethyst whispered, and when Miranda narrowed her eyes, she hastened to correct herself. “ _Miss_ Miranda. Please—kiss me.” 

“Answer the question first,” Miranda cooed. “Aren’t you the loveliest thing I’ve seen?”

A languorous flush suffused Amethyst and she shuddered in Miranda’s arms. _The loveliest thing—she thinks I’m lovely—_

Fuck, she needed this.

“Yes,” Amethyst whispered. “I’m the loveliest thing—“

Miranda kissed her, slow and deep and sensual, stepping forward until their bodies were flush and pinning Amethyst against the wall with her body weight, crowding her in with her height. Five inches on Amethyst at least. _She’s so tall,_ Amethyst thought dizzily, _I always forget how tall she is._

Miranda’s hands on her waist, sliding down her hips, caressing her thighs. Amethyst arched her back and moaned, craving more.

“Good girl,” Miranda crooned in her ear. “Gonna sing a little song for me?”

“Yes, Miss Miranda,” Amethyst said, voice quivering, “anything you want, Miss, I’ll do it—“ 

 _It’s strange_ , she thought as Miranda gently put a hand around her throat and squeezed, forcing her head back against the wall, the words floating abstractly in her skull. _Strange how easy it is for her to get me there. Floating and flying, flying and floating, she gets me there and it doesn’t even hurt—_

“This way,” Miranda ordered, and Amethyst obeyed. Miranda’s house looked like something out of _Kinfolk_ magazine, minimalist and pale, but with unexpected touches: a series of Bela Lugosi movie posters, a bookshelf full of true crime and horror novels (beautifully organized by color and size), and in the bedroom _—_

Amethyst forgot everything about Miranda’s weird taste in decor, because Miranda was taking her _to her bedroom._ She steered Amethyst with a hand tightly curled in her hair, gently nudged open the door, and pushed Amethyst inside. On her bed, an immaculately-made California king with a cream-colored duvet, a plush burgundy blanket on top of it, and a set of four-point restraints, their straps disappearing under the bed.

“Oh my god,” Amethyst said faintly.

“You like it, darlin’?” Miranda asked, her lips brushing Amethyst’s ear. “I set it up just for you.”

“I love it,” Amethyst said. “Thank you, Miss—“

“I know what you need,” Miranda told her. “What did you say last night? That you wanted to ‘lay there and take it’?”

She smacked Amethyst’s ass, and laughed at Amethyst’s yelp. “That’s what you’re going to do. Now take your clothes off.”

Amethyst stripped out of her jeans and blouse with alacrity, nearly popping the buttons off the latter as she yanked it over her head.

“Slow down,” Miranda admonished. “Treat your clothing nicely.”

(No jabs about tailoring today; Miranda had a sense of timing.)

Amethyst had a fine body, sculpted to perfection after years of martial arts classes and a natural tendency to run lean, but she leaned more toward compact than petite. No problem for her, most of the time; sure, sometimes she felt like a Toyota Corolla, solid and practical, in comparison to Miranda (who was a sleek Mercedes, of course, or maybe a Rolls-Royce), but when Miranda was looking at her like _that,_ it didn’t seem to matter.

“Don’t move,” Miranda said. She stepped closer, fingers gliding over Amethyst’s skin, raising goosebumps on her arms. Amethyst kept her hands at her side, no matter how badly she itched to touch Miranda back. Her nails lightly scratched Amethyst’s chest, circled her sensitive nipples teasingly until Amethyst was arching into her touch, and trailed downward. _Further down,_ chanted Amethyst in her head. _Go further, see how wet I am—_

But Miranda stopped at the large bruise over Amethyst’s fucked-up ribs.

“Are you fine to do this?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice. “This doesn’t look good.”

“Just a bruise,” Amethyst lied. “Please don’t stop, Miss.”

Miranda cocked her head, eyeing Amethyst as if to sniff out any possible lies she might tell. Amethyst did her best to look innocent—not hard when she was in this headspace.

“Good girl,” Miranda said finally, and Amethyst glowed at the praise. “You don’t want me to stop, hmm?”

“No, Miss,” Amethyst said. “I can take whatever you want to give me.”

“Ah.” A long pause, then Miranda gently clasped Amethyst’s throat in her hand. Her thumb rested on Amethyst’s pulse, fluttering like a rabbit’s, and she tightened her grip. Tighter, tighter, all while Amethyst stood compliant with her eyes wide and locked on Miranda’s face. Miranda kissed her, stealing her last breath, and didn’t let go. Amethyst couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, her heart was going wild and she felt her pulse throbbing under Miranda’s thumb and between her legs—

Miranda let her go. Amethyst gasped, swaying, and grabbed at the wall for support. Miranda watched her with what looked like amusement.

“The things you let me do to you,” she said. Was that affection in her voice? “Get to the bed and lay on your back. I have a surprise for you.”

Amethyst went. The bed was firmer than she anticipated, the beautiful burgundy blanket soft as velvet. She laid on her back and watched Miranda fasten the restraints: wrists tugged tight and high above her head, with her ankles cuffed and spread wide. _Easy access,_ thought Amethyst, a little hysterically. And then Miranda was pulling out another strap, this one just a simple length of leather, heavily padded toward the middle, with a buckle on the end.

“What’s that for?” she asked, and at Miranda’s severe look, added, “Miss.”

“This, honey, is going to keep you nice and secure,” Miranda told her, and belted the strap across Amethyst’s hips. Instinctively, Amethyst arched her back and tried to wriggle loose. She couldn’t even move; Miranda made sound investments in her bondage gear. She was effectively trapped—bound to the bed, slave to Miranda’s whim—fuck, she was so _wet—_

“Good,” Miranda said with satisfaction, and trailed her nails up Amethyst’s thighs. Amethyst whimpered without meaning to, and tried to squirm closer to Miranda’s hands. To no avail; Miranda just pulled her hands away and laughed.

“Open your legs wider, honey,” but Miranda’s hands were already on her knees, pushing them open even as she told Amethyst to do so. And Amethyst really was wet; they both heard the sound of her cunt spreading open. Fuck, she could _smell_ it, that familiar musk. Amethyst tried to bury her head in the pillow, blushing fiery red all over.

“Look at you,” Miranda purred, and touched Amethyst—played with her nipples until Amethyst was panting and squirming, touched her cunt, lightly stroking the lips, dipping the tip of a finger in her wetness and swirling it around her clit until Amethyst was whining and arching her back. The strap across her hips dug in hard, a hint of pain just enough to add spice to the situation. “Dripping wet for me, aren’t you, darlin’?”

“Yes,” Amethyst whispered. Her mouth was on autopilot, lust hazing her vision. “Please, Miss, will you touch me? Will you make me come all over your hands? I _need_ it—”

“I’ll do you one better,” Miranda said, and Amethyst heard the rasp of a wooden drawer being opened. Then Miranda was holding up a toy, a long white thing with a tennis ball-shaped head, and Amethyst heard herself moan as if from a distance. “Shall we work a little magic, dear?” She smiled at Amethyst, real cruelty written in the curve of her lips. “I’ll warn you, I’m _relentless._ ”

“ _Please,_ ” Amethyst begged, and Miranda gave her that razor smile again and put the vibrator against Amethyst’s cunt and turned it on.

Amethyst shrieked, back arching like a bow, and the strap cut into her skin while the vibrator shook her apart. It forced an orgasm from her in seconds, an involuntary climax, and Miranda didn’t stop. She thrashed and cried and begged, writhed as another orgasm ripped through her, and another—she could feel her own fluids dripping down her cunt and ass, felt more than saw Miranda scoop them up with a finger and lick it clean. Miranda said, “You taste so good, sweetheart,” and Amethyst barely processed it. Sweat on her skin, tears on her face—when did she start crying?—Miranda still didn’t stop.

“Say thank you if you want more,” she said, and Amethyst howled, “Thank you, Miss, thank you, thank you I love you I love you—“

“Mmm, too loud, I think. I do have neighbors, you know,” and damp cotton was shoved in Amethyst’s mouth. Miranda’s panties, she’d know that taste anywhere, and Amethyst screamed into her gag as Miranda pressed her legs even wider apart and bit her thigh, her stomach, grinding the vibrator even harder against her and—and—

Stars dancing in front of her as she convulsed.

“Mercy!” Amethyst cried out around her gag. “Mercy, Miss, mercy!”

Miranda whisked away the vibrator instantly and crawled on top of Amethyst, pressing the vibrating head against her own clit now. She bit and sucked at Amethyst’s skin, her weight making Amethyst’s ribs scream (and oh, Amethyst liked it, she _loved_ it), and panted “Fuck, fuck, darlin’, my sweet girl, _fuck,_ ” into Amethyst’s ear and came apart astride Amethyst, mouth on her throat.

Amethyst floated in a haze. At some point, Miranda tossed the vibrator away totally, and now she was working on the straps binding Amethyst to the bed. The hip strap was gone; Amethyst turned her head lazily, watching Miranda unhook the cuffs and rub gently at the chafed area of her wrists. A vague part of her noted that she’d have marks tomorrow, and also that she didn’t care.

Ankles next; Miranda took each foot in her hands and kissed it, more soothing than sexual. She was red and sweaty, her hair a mess, still wearing an unbuttoned shirt and a bra, and Amethyst felt a sudden, dizzying surge of affection. She held her arms out to Miranda wordlessly, and Miranda took the cue, sliding into Amethyst’s arms as if she was meant to be there.

“Feeling less stressed?” she asked, and Amethyst took a second to process it. When she did, she laughed, burying her face in Miranda’s hair.

“Uh huh,” she said, about as coherent as she was going to get right then. Miranda understood; Miranda got her water and held her and pressed chaste kisses into her skin until Amethyst could speak again.

“That was so good,” she finally managed to croak, her voice wrecked. “I—thank you. I needed that.”

Miranda was smiling at her; Miranda, not looking smug or arrogant or anything like that, and now that Amethyst thought about it, it had been a long time since she’d seen any of those expressions on Miranda’s face. All she could remember was this, shy affection occasionally clothed in affected disinterest.

 _Oh,_ Amethyst realized. _Oh._

“Do you think,” she tried, and then, “Maybe we—“

Miranda arched an eyebrow quizzically when she didn’t finish.

“Maybe we?” she prompted.

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” Amethyst finished in a rush. God, she sounded like she’d never been on a date in her life. But then Miranda flashed her that beautiful, brilliant smile, and Amethyst forgot to be self-conscious.

“I’d like that,” Miranda said softly. Amethyst grinned at her helplessly, and she smiled back. Then she brightened even more. “Do you want an eclair?” 

“I’d love one.” Amethyst watched Miranda walk from the bedroom to the kitchen—watched her ass, more like. “Don’t think that I’m going to be nice to you all the time,” she added. “I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Miranda tossed back, and came back with two eclairs on a little plate, and some fancy cloth napkins that were probably only fancy to Amethyst’s eyes. “Here you go.”

As Amethyst bit into the pastry and sweet raspberry filled her mouth, she closed her eyes and determinedly shoved away all thoughts of the outside world. She could worry about Nightmare later. For now, there was only Miranda.

 

 

 

**viii. Interlude: The Box**

 

In the box. Cramped, too short to stretch out and too small to sit up. All black. Eyes opened or eyes shut, made no difference. Air leaked in through cracks in the box, just enough to keep her alive. Deep breath. Salt crusted on her lips; by the sea, she knew that from the distant sound of the bay. Salt stinging in her cracked lips. She could morph into liquid and sink through the cracks. Morph into a flea and wriggle out. She could morph into a gas and float away—if only she wasn’t so _hungry_.

The box opened sometimes. Too exhausted to lash out, she let him toss energy bars in the box every now and then. Ate them despite hating solid food. Good enough for now. How long had it been? Weeks. Weak. She was weak. Tried to move but was stuck in this form, this human body. Limbs pressed against wood, raw sores opening and closing on her skin. Pissed in the box but was sluiced down when he opened it to feed her. Muscles atrophied. She needed—

_He said, This is only temporary, forgive me, we can go back to how things were after this is done._

_He said, This isn’t your fault. I needed a way to lure that little bitch out of her den._

_He said, Look at my face, look at these scars, look at what she did to me._

_He said, she needs to pay._

—she needed Cipher.

 

 

 

**ix. Walk through the valley of the shadow**

 

The bliss could never last. 

Amethyst knew that, and yet she spent a week and a half walking around in a haze, that honeymoon state of first love. And yeah, it _was_ love; neither she nor Miranda said it, but they both knew it. They had too much history to bother with the whole dating, get-to-know-you thing. So she and Miranda were in love; Nightmare had faded into the background with the waxing moon; her ribs had healed, her job was secure and stable, life in general was going well. She hadn’t heard from Metamorph lately, but Metamorph had dropped off the radar without warning for months at a time before—six months, in fact, and it hadn’t even been half that.

Bliss couldn’t last, but Amethyst didn’t expect its demise to be heralded by a package delivery.

“Amethyst Rai?” the delivery guy asked when she opened the door, blinking at him fuzzily. It was early morning, and she’d barely pried herself out of Miranda’s arms at the sound of the buzzer. If he hadn’t been so persistent, she might have ignored him altogether.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she said, and the delivery guy presented her with a tablet. 

“Got a priority delivery for you. Fingerprint here, please,” he said, and when she obeyed, still a little confused—she hadn’t ordered anything recently—he produced a padded envelope and handed it over to her, thanked her, and jogged back to his truck.

Who would send her a priority package? Anything that important would be work-related, and they’d send it to the lab in that case. Amethyst stepped back inside, leaning on the closed door, and examined the envelope. There wasn’t a return address, no indication who it could be from. Its contents felt like a little square box, and when Amethyst slit the envelope open, that’s exactly what it was: a square box with a lid, like the kind you’d use for jewelry.

“Miranda, honestly,” she muttered under her breath, but a smile curled her lips. A little early to be buying each other jewelry, but what the hell. She opened the box, prepared for some sparkly earrings or something (hopefully not a ring—it was _way_ too early for that).

Inside the box laid a piece of paper, folded, and a lock of beige hair.

Amethyst was suddenly hyperaware of her heart pounding in her ears. She knew that hair well, had seen it twist and shift into hands or tentacles, had it whip in her face and get caught in her lip balm, back when Metamorph flew her around on her back. Very carefully, she nudged aside the beige hair, and picked up the paper. _Regular printing paper,_ Cipher noted. _The most pedestrian kind possible. Not much of a clue._

Unfolded, the paper read, in messy handwriting:

_Dear Cipher,_

_It’s time to pay the piper. I’m not a vain man, but the damage you’ve done is beyond measure. Tonight at the docks. 1am. You might even see her alive again._

And below that, in familiar but shaky handwriting: _Metamorph._

No signature from the man himself, but he didn’t need one. Only one person could have a beef with her at this point in her life, and only one person could contain Metamorph. Cipher folded the paper, straightening the creases. It didn’t make sense; nemeses never took things to the point of murder. Threats, yes; temporary kidnapping, yes; but to go any further was to completely defeat the point of having a nemesis. Cipher knew Metamorph would never forgive him for using her as bait; she was too proud for that.

But hopefully not too proud to be rescued, since that’s exactly what Cipher was going to do.

She needed a plan of attack. Going down to the docks, guns blazing (metaphorically speaking), wasn’t a viable strategy. Cipher had a vague fear of water, not enough to affect her life, but enough to make her avoid the sea if possible, and she didn’t know the territory well enough to set a trap. Or at all, actually. She’d have to go down today—

“Amethyst?”

Cipher didn’t jump, of course, but she did go very still. The air around her was quivering with the electricity she’d gathered while lost in thought; she had to consciously release it as she called back to Miranda, “I’m almost done.”

“Come back to bed, then,” Miranda’s voice floated from the bedroom. It was light and teasing, bright with pleasure, and Cipher’s throat tightened as she realized an essential truth: she couldn’t let Miranda know.

Miranda knew _Amethyst_ , see. Miranda knew the computer engineer, the snarky book club member, the self-proclaimed kinky bitch Amethyst Rai, and Miranda didn’t know that Cipher existed. And, as was amply being demonstrated, Cipher was dangerous to know.

Amethyst was not a fan of lying. Cipher had no such compunctions.

“Be right there,” she said, and dropped the box and its contents in the trash as she made her way back to the bedroom. She wouldn’t need it anymore; she’d memorized the words.

Now it was time to be Amethyst again, with Cipher lurking beneath the surface. Amethyst paused a moment before she joined Miranda, wrangling her stories in her head, separating out her two different lives.

“Okay,” she said under her breath, “here we go.”

Miranda was sprawled on the bed, half-tangled in the sheets, body languid from sleep and the memory of good sex, her hair still tucked up in her sleeping scarf. She raised an inquiring eyebrow as Amethyst entered the room.

“Just some political shit,” Amethyst said. “I think I scared him away.”

“You are quite ferocious,” Miranda drawled, then snickered when Amethyst bared her teeth and fake-snarled. “Yeah, exactly. I quiver in fear.”

“You’ll quiver with _something_ , all right,” Amethyst said, and pounced. Miranda was suitably distracted. And in the back of Amethyst’s mind, Cipher was analyzing her options for the evening.

…

Metal shipping crates surrounded Cipher, some as tall as her and half again, stacked in a maze-like pattern that probably made perfect sense to the people who worked on the docks, but very little to her. She hadn’t had much time to study; it was a Saturday, and Miranda had wanted a lazy day. Breakfast in bed, morning sex, lunch downtown, a walk in the park, bickering in a bookstore, dinner, drinks, then sleep, though not entirely by Miranda’s wishes. Cipher had crushed an Ambien into powder and sprinkled it on her mashed potatoes, which were already heavily laden with garlic. Miranda had been tipsy enough—well, that was generous; Miranda was _drunk_ —to not notice the bitter taste. She’d be out for at least eight hours, probably more. Enough time for Cipher to slip out of the apartment to case the docks an hour before her date with the Pale Horse.

So: the maze. She’d half-hoped to find Metamorph, but knew it was just a pipe dream. The likelihood that the Pale Horse had just shut her in a typical shipping crate was minuscule; he probably had forced her into a form and kept her there. If that were possible; Cipher didn’t know.

There was a lot Cipher didn’t know about Metamorph. The extent of her mutation, her mundane name, even how old she was. To be fair, they were partners, not friends, but a sliver of guilt had wormed its way into Cipher’s gut regardless. There were so many variables that needed to be declared before she could make a move. The Pale Horse’s touch didn’t affect her—that was one of the reasons they were nemeses—but how else could he hurt her? How could you hurt a shapeshifter? Did the two of them have a history beyond what Cipher knew? She didn’t know the answers, and she didn’t know how to find them. 

Cipher was slowly realizing something as she crouched in the tight space between two shipping containers: she was a shitty hero. Her true skills were virtual, her sitting behind a computer screen with her mind in the digital world. Yes, she was dangerous; she could electrocute people, start fires, fly, but she was like a weapon that needed a wielder to be used. Metamorph had always done the legwork when they went out; she was the one who went on patrol, tracked people down, then texted Cipher with her exact location so Cipher could swoop in and feel like she saved the day. But Cipher didn’t know how to do that. She guessed she had to learn.

“Step one,” she muttered to herself. “Stop hiding.”

It was half-past midnight, and the docks were empty. Cipher wasn’t sure if this was usual or not. She unfolded herself from her crouch, and made her way through the maze, sticking to the shadows. She kept a hand on the metal crates, feeling the electricity she carried hum in the tips of her fingers. These crates would be one of her best weapons; metal was a good conductor, and anyone touching the crate when she pushed a charge through it would end up fried.

 _The bastard can survive anything,_ Metamorph said in her head, and Cipher shook her head vigorously.

 _Survive the first fight, maybe,_ she thought. _But I hurt him enough to piss him off. This is just the beginning._

She wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings, and committed a clear violation of rule one of heroing: always watch your back. She didn’t even hear him coming. But she did feel the two-by-four as it cracked against her skull.

**. . .**

 “Wake up.” 

Her skull throbbed. Nausea curled in her belly, suffusing her body, making her limbs weak. When she tried to move, pain exploded in her head and she whimpered, collapsing.

“Wake up.” The voice was insistent, male, cold. Familiar.

“Nngh,” she said, or something along those lines, and tried to open her eyes. Blinding white light pierced her eyes and she groaned again.

“This is pathetic,” said the voice with a sigh. “I expected better of you, Cipher.”

 _Cipher._ Yes, she was Cipher, she was Ci—wait, that _voice_ —

She shoved herself upright, heedless of the pain from the concussion or the way her body threatened to puke up her dinner. The Pale Horse was seated about a dozen feet away from her in a folding chair, next to a wooden box with canvas stretched over the top. And his face—fuck, his face was _melted_ , the tissue of his neck and hands just as damaged. He was dressed all in white, a nice enough suit, his hair lank, his pale eyes glowing with malice.

“You,” she rasped. “You’re early.”

“Just on time, really,” he said, and showed her the face of his watch. “See? 1AM on the nose.”

Cipher glared at him. They were on a ship, she thought, a hulking freighter, toward the back (or the front—she vaguely knew about sterns and bows, but not which was which or how to tell). Behind her was open sea, no bars to barricade her way. The steady crash of the water against the hull and the slight bobbing of the ship turned her stomach. But the ship was metal, she could feel it.

“Like I said in my note,” he said conversationally, “I’m not a vain man. If you’d only destroyed my appearance, that would be fine. But do you know how this feels, Cipher? To be burnt like this? To live with these scars?”

Cipher shook her head— _ow_ —and pushed her boots against the floor, trying to get the steel toe in contact with the ship.

“It hurts.” He was smiling now, kind of; the scars were pulling to the left, at any rate. “Nerve damage. Or so I assume; I can’t really walk into the hospital and have them examine me. The pain never stops. My brain thinks I’m still burning. And it’s _your_ fault.

Oh, and stop trying to electrocute me again,” he added. “I can see you trying. I assure you, that’s not a good idea.”

“Give me one good reason,” she challenged, and he smiled and tapped the box next to him. Cipher’s brain caught up with her as he said, “Priscilla—excuse me, _Metamorph—_ why don’t you say hello to your friend?”

A quiet thump from the box, like someone was too lazy to hit it properly—or too weak. Cipher stared at it, calculating its shape. She had to be in a different form, that box was far too small. So why not escape?

“You’re wondering why she hasn’t escaped,” the Pale Horse said, still with that eerie smile.

“You a mind reader now?” Cipher asked. There was another wooden box next to her, the same shape and size as Metamorph’s prison. She could set it on fire and…kick it over to the Pale Horse? Throw it at him and risk being burned? There were times she’d really like to be telekinetic.

“A telepath? I can only dream, unfortunately,” the Pale Horse replied. “But to answer your question: she can’t. Would you like to see?”

A quivering dread rose in Cipher’s chest. She nodded wordlessly.

His smile widened enough to become a grimace, a slash in his mouth. He took a folding knife out of his pocket, flicked it open, and unceremoniously stabbed the canvas on the box. Cipher froze, horrible images of the canvas _being_ Metamorph in her head, but he only sliced it open, then tipped the box over.

A woman sprawled out—recognizably Metamorph, but only barely. She was in her unmorphed state, her close-to-human default, naked, but she was stick-thin and hunched over, with raw wounds where the box had rubbed blisters on her skin. She opened her eyes and flinched against the light.

“She can’t shift, you see,” the Pale Horse told Cipher. “That’s the best way to keep mutants in line: starve them, deprive them, make them weak, and they’re too weak to use their mutation. Unless, of course, it’s like mine.” He bares his teeth at Cipher. “ _I_ don’t have to do anything but touch you.”

“I will kill you,” Cipher said flatly, and she meant it. “How dare you do this to her?”

The Pale Horse waved this off as if a little torture between nemeses was nothing.

“She’ll survive,” he said. “If you follow my instructions.” He pointed to the box next to Cipher. “Get in there.”

Cipher stared at him, appalled. “What? No!”

He sighed, like she’d terribly disappointed him. “Get in there, or I’ll kill Priscilla here.”

“You would never,” Cipher said (and that was a phrase of Miranda’s, a phrase from Amethyst’s world, she couldn’t bring her _here_ ). “You’re her nemesis! You can’t kill her.”

“Do you want to test that?” asked the Pale Horse, and leaned down to brush a finger against Metamorph’s back. She choked, tried to roll away but didn’t have the energy. Her eyes drifted shut.

“Stop!” Cipher was on her feet, screaming. “Stop it! Stop! I’ll get in the box!”

“Please do,” the Pale Horse said, genteel. “Don’t forget to put the lid on.”

There was indeed a lid leaning against the box, with a beam across the center on both sides. It looked like the box itself had some kind of external latch. If the wood weren’t so solid, she could break it. She picked it up, using the beam as a handhold, and hesitated. _If I set this on fire and throw it at him, he won’t catch it in time—I could electrocute the ship, but Metamorph would get hit—I could—_

Her head hurt so fucking bad. On the floor, Metamorph moaned.

_Fuck._

She put her left leg in, then the right. She sat down slowly, her head and shoulders poking out from the box. Mutely, she looked at the Pale Horse as if he would show some sign of mercy. She knew he wouldn’t. 

“Go on,” he said encouragingly, his hand hovering above Metamorph’s back. She was frail, half the life sucked out of her. She couldn’t survive any more defiance on Cipher’s part. Cipher took the lid, squeezed herself into the box, and pulled the lid on top of her. A moment later, she heard the latch click; he moved like a ghost.

She was smaller than Metamorph, but the rough wood of the box still dug painfully into her back and knees. It was too cramped; she couldn’t lay down, couldn’t sit up. Her muscles were already screaming. Cipher shut her eyes against the pain, and tried to think.

“I didn’t want it to be this way,” he said regretfully. Her hearing was slightly muffled, but she could understand him fine. He was circling her box, talking to her. Taking his time. Enjoying this. “This is too good for you. It’s going to be a quick death.

I had other plans, you see.” He’d stopped in front of her now. A reminiscent tone crept into his voice as he continued. “I didn’t just want to kill you. I wanted to _break you._ And I knew exactly how to do it. I collected on a favor from a friend whose expertise is in just that. She lured you into her trap like a fly into a web.”

“Nightmare,” Cipher whispered.

“Just so. But then,” and now his voice was thick with anger, “but then the bitch went and fell in love with you, and you with her, and ruined _that_ for me.”

“ _What?”_

Cipher’s world halted. Her breath stalled in her lungs, her pulse pounding. She counted heartbeats to keep from screaming as the pieces fell together. Miranda whispering to her in the house—the way Nightmare had suddenly called off the chase—how little Miranda had reacted to her broken ribs—how Nightmare hadn’t been active since Halloween, the day before she and Miranda had officially gotten together—

“You didn’t know?” Delight in his voice. “Oh, that’s _perfect._ I thought you two had a little arrangement set up—some pairs of nemeses do, you know—but this is _delicious._ You didn’t know.” He laughed. “Betrayed by the woman you loved. It’s poignant, don’t you think?”

He kicked the box, and it slid backwards with a creak. Backwards—backwards toward the water. Amethyst—and she _was_ Amethyst now, had slipped out of Cipher’s skin the moment she thought of Miranda—shrieked and thudded against the box.

“Remember Metamorph,” the Pale Horse warned her, all humor dropped from his voice. “She may be my nemesis, but I can always find a new one. Now, where were we? Ah, yes, betrayal.” Another kick. “You know I’m going to go after her next? She can try to trick me all she likes, but once I get my hands on her…” A low whistle. “She’ll regret betraying me for _you._ ”

Rage was building inside Amethyst unlike any she’d ever experienced before, fueled by horror and fear. Cipher was calm and collected as a rule. Even concussed, she was trying to come up with plans. Amethyst, though? Amethyst was _pissed._

“Mull on that while you drown, why don’t you,” the Pale Horse said, and kicked her into the water.

She fell—how many feet? She didn’t know—fell until she crashed into the water. It felt like she’d crashed into cement, except she kept sinking, saltwater flooding the box, stinging her eyes, and Amethyst opened her mouth to scream, and water rushed in and she gagged and vomited and then she was under water completely, no air, saltwater in her lungs—

— _Children laughing, children chanting, “Deliver us from evil, O Lord,” Amethyst’s head underwater, water in her lungs, fear and anger filling her, fear/anger/fear until she explodes—_

—She could feel the metals in the seawater—if she threw her consciousness out, the metal hull of the ship—

— _Do it, darlin’,_ said internal Miranda, _I’m coming for you—_

Amethyst screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and the electric charge rippled through the water and through the ship and incinerated the box and left a sonic boom in its wake.

Free of the box, she clawed her way to the surface. Dead fish bobbed all around her, gently tapping her face as she broke through the water. The water was sizzling, and the smell of burnt flesh was strong in the air. 

She didn’t need to swim; there was enough ambient electricity to grab it and propel herself up to the ship. She zipped over the railing and landed on the deck with light feet. There was a blackened, smoking husk lying at her feet. It was vaguely person-shaped, a disk of metal melted where the wrist would be: a watch. So it was him, then.

“Good,” she said dully, and turned away.

Amethyst thought she should be feeling something. Anger, definitely. Glee, maybe. She _did_ kill an enemy, after all. But she felt mostly hollow.

Then a noise from the smoldering ash that remained of Metamorph’s box. Could she be alive?

The answer was yes. Burned, coated in ash, unable to move, but alive. Her mutation had saved her again. Amethyst knelt beside Metamorph and gently dusted the ash away.

“See?” Metamorph asked. Amethyst took her in, looked her up and down. She’d done this. It was _her_ fault, Metamorph was going to die and it was _her_ fault—

“Shit,” she swore under her breath. “ _Shit._ I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s my fault—“

“Nnn,” interrupted Metamorph. “ _See_. Water.”

“You…want to see the water?” Amethyst asked, hesitating. It was a weird request.

“In,” insisted Metamorph. “In water.”

“Put you in the water?”

“Food. In water.” Metamorph blinked at her. “Live.”

“ _Oh._ ” So Metamorph needed the sea to live? That was...odd. But Amethyst could do that. This one little thing. She gathered Metamorph in her arms; Metamorph was so light, so frail. Her head lolled against Amethyst as she carried her to the back of the ship.

“I hope I see you again,” Amethyst murmured, and Metamorph sighed.

Then Amethyst let her go. There was a splash, but when Amethyst craned her head and strained her eyes, she couldn’t see a trace of Metamorph. She sighed, and turned away.

To come face-to-face with Miranda.

“You’re alive,” Miranda breathed. She took a step forward, reaching out to Amethyst. Amethyst rooted herself on the deck and stood her ground. “Darlin’, you’re _alive._ ”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Amethyst spat, and when Miranda gasped and stared at her with big, hurt eyes, Amethyst added venomously, “ _Nightmare._ ”

Miranda went still, then stepped away from Amethyst slowly. The change that came over her was both terrible and fascinating; her posture slid from Miranda’s rigid, charm school-trained stance to something looser and more intimidating. The shock on her face smoothed into something colder and sadder. Her hands fell to her sides, flexed and went loose again.

“So you know,” she said softly.

“Yeah, I know,” Amethyst said acidly. “He told me everything. _Everything._ You fucking—I _trusted_ you!”

“I’m sorry,” said Miranda, still quiet. “I didn’t want it to be this way.”

Amethyst laughed bitterly. “Funny. He said the exact same thing.”

“It’s true,” Miranda insisted. “I know what I did was wrong, but I stopped. Amethyst, I stopped for you, I’m not Nightmare anymore—“

“You tortured me!” Amethyst screamed. Her voice cracked, her throat wrecked from saltwater and screaming. “You lured into a fucking haunted house and tried to drive me crazy, you’ve done it to others—you’ve hurt so many people!”

“I—“ Miranda began, and Amethyst bowled her over, still yelling.

“Do you _like_ it, Miranda? Do you like looking at me and remembering how scared I was? Do you like thinking about me nearly pissing myself in fear?” She took a step closer to Miranda, jabbing a finger at her. “What about me drowning? Does the idea turn you on, is that why you did all this? Did you fuck yourself and think about him killing me?” She was crying now, wracked with great heaving sobs that made her throat and stomach clench.

“I had nothing to do with this!” Miranda yelled back—finally, she was showing some fucking emotion. “I told him to leave you alone! I told him you were off-limits!” 

“I wasn’t off-limits when you _tortured_ me, was I?”

“I didn’t know you were Cipher then,” Miranda cried. Tears were running down her face, her mascara smeared down her cheeks. “If I had, I would never—“

“Like it makes it _better_ that you’d’ve tortured other people for him?”

“You’re not innocent yourself, you know,” Miranda snarled, suddenly shifting gears. “You heroes are all the same—you like to go out and beat people up to make yourselves feel better and call it a civic service. What do you call it—‘going on patrol’? Please. And I know _you,_ Amethyst— _Cipher._ I know you break the law when you’re bored—“

“Are you seriously comparing hacking to being a murderer?” asked Amethyst incredulously.

“—And you _drugged_ me,” Miranda added viciously. “You dosed me without my consent. You think that’s okay?”

“Compared to being a supervillain? Yeah, I think that’s okay!”

Miranda was shaking her head. “You’re so sanctimonious. The only difference between us is that you had a good mentor.” Her face twisted. “I did not.”

“That’s no excuse.”

Miranda just shook her head. She suddenly looked very tired.

“Please,” she said. “You’re in bad shape. Just let me take you home—“

“You’re never putting a foot through my door again.”

Miranda stopped speaking and stared at her. This time, the hurt in her eyes was real.

“I thought…” she said, and trailed off.

“What, that all of this would be fine? It won’t, Miranda.” Amethyst shouldered her aside. She was shaking, but she wouldn’t let Miranda take her home like they were still lovers. “It will never be okay. I don’t want to see you again.”

Miranda just stood there as Amethyst stumbled home. Once, Amethyst looked over her shoulder to check on her. Miranda was stock-still, staring out at the black ocean. She never looked back.

 

 

 

**x. Miss Miranda in the Conservatory with the Vines**

 

So, back to her mundane life. No problem. Amethyst could handle it; she'd done it before. And the cycle was so very similar to her first time without heroing. She went to work; she fucked around online; she occasionally took home pretty girls from bars or hooked up with them on Tinder; she came home, ignored the remnants of her costume (even it couldn’t survive that last electrical pulse), fucked around online some more, and went to bed. Occasionally she ate. Rinse and repeat.

It was, in a word, boring. Fucking boring, even. Her life had gone beyond tolerably dull to suicide-inducing dull. (That was an exaggeration, most nights, although there were some that were closer than others.) There was a brief period of happiness brought about by a note she found one evening on the kitchen table, _Thanks_ scrawled on it in Metamorph’s handwriting, but the shapeshifter never came by after that. At least she was alive.

That glow lasted for about two days, then back to the same old boredom.

And then her life changed again.

It was, ironically, due to the heroes’ network that she heard Nightmare was active again. It wasn’t proven, of course. She’d been off the radar for so long—it had been months since Amethyst had killed the Pale Horse at the docks—that Nightmare wasn’t the first villain to spring to mind when reports of a college student who said he was eaten alive by a giant Venus flytrap, then taunted with the ghosts of his dead family, came out. The heroes’ network was attributing it to a villain who used an airborne toxin to spark fear in the mind of his victims. But it dovetailed nicely with Nightmare’s usual MO: random, inoffensive person tormented by things that didn’t exist, then let go once he broke. Amethyst knew both the woman and the villain; she knew that Miranda’s taste for dramatic irony would include a man being lured by a flytrap.

Amethyst should have left it alone and she knew that. She’d been very clear with Miranda on how little she wanted to see her again. But…

Who else could handle Nightmare, if not Amethyst?

She couldn’t be Cipher anymore; Cipher had died at the docks. Instead, she forwent any signature costume or moves and went for the practical: she pulled strings to get a length of antistatic fabric and made it into a bodysuit to protect it from bursting into flames, and made the effort to be more judicious about just where she let the sparks fly. She shelled out the money to have it lined with bulletproof material—it wouldn’t turn a knife, but in her experience, getting shot at was far more common—and bought a skiers’ balaclava to protect her face. It would’ve made her look like a criminal if it weren’t all in bright yellow. (She had had very limited color options for the antistatic fabric.) The media ended up calling her the Canary. Well, it could have been worse. Probably.

So back to vigilantism she went. She wanted to be known, wanted Nightmare to know she was coming for her. She stalked the streets during the waning moon and tracked down rapists, prevented robberies, and once helped a nice old lady into her building who’d forgotten her swipe card for the complex’s security system. Truly a hero to be reckoned with.

Every day, she moved closer to the Old District. But it was in the botanical gardens that she encountered Nightmare for the first time in nearly a year.

Amethyst went there sometimes, on those nights when she was feeling too melancholy to be on patrol. She left the bodysuit at home and went there as Amethyst, not Canary, walking under the massive trees, the looming willows sweeping the ground with their branches, the stately maples with their leaves shading red. When it was too cold for that, she spent time in the Conservatory, with its delicate glass panels and hothouse flowers. She would sit by the pool in the aquatic house, watching the water ripple, reminding herself not to be afraid.

It was there, by the pool, leaning on a pillar surrounded by the house’s climbing vines, that Nightmare found her.

The lights were low in the aquatic house, and Nightmare melted out of the shadows like she belonged there. Amethyst went still but didn’t leap up or scream like she wanted to. She kept her eyes on the pool, deliberately showing Nightmare her back, making her wait (and wasn’t this disturbingly like the L5 meetings?), until she stretched dramatically (huge yawn, back crack, looking bored) and turned around. 

“Hey,” she said, giving Nightmare a once-over. “Nice outfit. Very…Morticia. Or maybe druid chic.”

“Druid chic?” Nightmare looked almost offended, and looked down at her dress: clingy black silk, diaphanous bell sleeves, low-cut neckline. Then scanned Amethyst, head-to-toe, and gave her a very mean smile. “You’re one to throw insults, _Canary._ ”

“What’s wrong with druid chic?” Amethyst asked. “And for what it’s worth, canaries are mean little bastards. Ever been attacked by a canary? It’s not pleasant. All those little pecks.”

She watched carefully as Miranda’s face went through many expressions during Amethyst’s little monologue: irritation, amusement, confusion, affection—shit, she had to avoid that—and she called her Miranda— _shit._

“Long time no see,” she said. “Enjoying terrorizing college kids again?”

“Ah,” she said. “Is that how it’s going to be, Amethyst?”

“Yeah, _Nightmare,_ ” Amethyst said, stressing the name. She stood from her slouch against the pillar and crossed her arms. “That’s how it’s going to be.”

Nightmare’s face shuttered.

“I’ve come looking for you,” Amethyst added.

Nightmare blinked once, slowly and lazily, and said, “I noticed. You’re not exactly subtle, darlin’.”

A long pause while they both desperately tried to ignore the word hanging between them.

“I suppose you’ve come to tell me to stop,” Nightmare said finally. “It’s not going to happen.” She shrugged off Amethyst’s glare. “I can’t stop using my mutation any more than you can stop using yours.”

“Yeah, but why use it for evil?” Amethyst asked—or _pleaded_ , might be more realistic. “You’ve got such a gift, you don’t have to ruin it like this.”

Nightmare cocked her head to the side and looked at Amethyst. Really _looked_ , cut Amethyst to her core and plucked her out, turned her over in her hands, and put her back inside. Amethyst stumbled back and nearly fell in the fountain; was this a normal response to meeting an ex in the wild, or did Nightmare have her hooks in her again?

“It’s more fun,” Nightmare said simply, and smiled. She wasn’t so different from Miranda; their smiles were the same. “And you think so too, honey.”

“Do I now?” Amethyst said. Her breath was coming quicker now. Nightmare took a step forward, trailed a finger along Amethyst’s jawline. She touched Amethyst’s lips; Amethyst seriously considered biting it off.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nightmare said thoughtfully. “Remember that little arrangement of ours we had at the book club?”

Amethyst laughed weakly. “How could I forget?”

“Well,” Nightmare said, hedging her words a little—that was cute—“There’s no reason we can’t do the same thing now.”

“ _What?”_ This time, Amethyst’s laugh was full-bodied and incredulous. “That’s ridiculous, Miranda. Look at you! Think about what you did to me!”

A frown on Nightmare’s face. “That’s in the past. Aren’t you over it yet?”

( _Yes_. She wanted what Nightmare was offering, wanted it more than she could say.)

“No!” Amethyst snapped. “You’re a supervillain. I can’t be fuckbuddies with a supervillain.”

She made a face at Amethyst’s language—vintage Miranda, right there.

“There’s no reason why you can’t,” she said reasonably. “You wouldn’t be the first hero to, ah, _have a relationship_ with her nemesis.”

She spread her arms. “And with my powers, this affair can be more than you could have ever dreamed.”

Amethyst shouldn’t. She couldn’t.

_A relationship with her nemesis._

_Nemesis._

Amethyst tossed her head back: a challenge.

“Show me,” she said.

“Oh,” Nightmare said, and in Amethyst’s mind something foreign quivered and stretched like a guitar string being plucked. “I plan to.”

The light in the room flickered. Amethyst twitched, looking up at the lamps dangling from the ceiling, the lights embedded in the wall. A haze had fallen over them, lending a strange tint to the room, making the shadows deeper and the black of Nightmare’s dress blacker. A susurration of leaves filled the room as the vines—as the vines _moved,_ sliding over each other, tangling and pulsating like veins. She staggered back, slipped, and fell in the pool, which had grown much deeper and wider in the minutes since she’d last looked, the water a blue so deep it looked black.

“Oh no,” said Nightmare laconically. “It seems that you’re all wet. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

Amethyst whirled to face Nightmare and was met with empty space.

“Wait,” she said. Her voice trembled. The sliding vines came to a stop; the lamps stopped flickering.

“ _Trust me,_ ” Nightmare whispered with Miranda’s voice. She was nowhere to be seen; her voice seemed to come from every angle. “ _I won’t hurt you. Tell me to stop at any time and I will. Trust me._ ”

Insanely, Amethyst did.

“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay, you can—you can do what you want with me.”

And the vines moved again with a hiss. The dark haze descended once more in the aquatic house, flinging crazy shadows on the walls as the vines crawled toward Amethyst. Her pulse accelerated, and she couldn’t quite restrain the instinct to flinch. Suddenly, she was hyperaware of her body: the way her wet t-shirt clung to her body, her pebbled nipples and the goosebumps on her skin, her skinny jeans soaked through. Peeling them off would be a battle—and oh, Amethyst liked the sound of that. A battle.

“I’m going to fight,” she whispered to Nightmare. “It’s okay. Don’t stop unless I say stop.”

A low laugh filled the room, reverberating long past its natural lifespan, and the vines kept coming.

Amethyst stumbled to the left, but it was a feint; she leaped to the right, landed on the rim of the pool and nearly slipped, but recovered, and dashed for the door. The vines hissed and writhed and suddenly Amethyst saw their plan: they slipped over the doorway, glistening as if coated in fluid, interlocking like a web—and she ran straight into it.

Immediately the vines wrapped around her, forcing her to stay still even as she writhed and shouted. They pinned down her arms, wrapped around her waist, held her legs spread open—oh god—and then a vine slid _under_ her shirt and up her body. It tore away her shirt, one long rip, and bared her breasts to the other flora in the room. Below her, two vines were making quick work of her jeans, and then her underwear—one vine slipped itself under the gusset, slid teasingly past her clit before tearing her underwear in half. That glistening fluid she’d seen before was sticky, trapping her hair and leaving slime trails on her skin, and everywhere it went, Amethyst started to tingle.

“Oh god,” she said, realization dawning, and renewed her struggle to get free with an overwhelming rush of glee. The tingles spread as the vines bound her tighter, sliding around her thighs, around her hips, and what was that on _that_ vine? Looked like some kind of fungus, a line of round discs barely raised above the vine’s surface, but which, Amethyst wasn’t sure—

Then the discs slipped over her nipples and _clamped down_ , wet and warm and _sucking_ like Miranda’s mouth on her body, like Nightmare’s mouth, and—

The lights went out, and Amethyst was plunged into total darkness.

She shrieked in surprise, and yelped again when the vines around her thighs jerked them open so she was held in the air with her legs spread as wide as possible. On her breasts, the vines squeezed and sucked, sending shooting bolts of pleasure straight to Amethyst’s clit, and she was tingling and trembling and already on edge, she wanted every part of her to be touched and bitten and licked and please, please, _please_ —

“Look at you,” Nightmare said in the darkness. Amethyst gasped and twitched in her bonds, arching her back involuntarily toward Nightmare’s voice. “All trussed up and soaking wet for me, aren’t you, darlin’?”

Hands on Amethyst’s thighs, stroking the skin bared between the ropes of the vines with her nails.

“This is how it’s going to be,” she said dreamily, and a vine slid between Amethyst’s legs, over her throbbing cunt, slipping back and forth, back and forth, rubbing that glistening fluid all over her clit until she was whining and squirming and arching her hips for more. “Out there in the mundane world, you can be a computer scientist or whatever it is you do. To the heroes and villains, you can be Canary, and I’ll be your nemesis. But we both know that you’re really mine _._ ”

“And you’re _mine,_ ” Amethyst hissed, but she broke into a moan as the vine circled her entrance and dipped inside.

“Yes.” Nightmare’s voice was indescribably tender. “I’m yours, my dearest. I’m yours.”

“So please!” Amethyst begged. “Please just fuck me!”

She _needed_ it, craved it, her entire body was pulsing and throbbing and aching with need. She tried to spread her legs wider, tried to squirm closer, but the vine evaded her—for a minute.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Nightmare purred, and the vine _slid inside her—_

Amethyst nearly screamed at its size; it seemed to swell as soon as it sheathed itself inside her, and it was _perfect_ , touching her where she desperately needed to be touched, filling her until she almost couldn’t take it. Her body twisted and writhed of its own accord, and the vine started thrusting—

This time she really did scream.

The vine fucked her and Nightmare kissed her, her mouth swallowing Amethyst’s screams. Then the vine with the discs on it joined the vine between her legs and—attached itself to her clit—oh _god_ —and another one was nudging at the entrance of her ass—and the glistening fluid helped it slide in. The stretch almost burned as it thrust in and out, but it was so _good_ and she was so full, so full, she couldn’t take it she couldn’t—

“ _Miranda!”_ she sobbed, and Nightmare wrapped her hair in her hands and yanked her head back and kissed her while a vine curled around her throat, tightening until she couldn’t breathe.

Amethyst exploded, her neurons lighting up like fireworks, and shook and trembled in the vines’ grasp.

And—they didn’t— _stop._

The vines pulsed inside and around her, thrusting and shifting and rustling until Amethyst couldn’t tell which way was up, or where she was, or count how many times she’d climaxed before Nightmare breathed, “Good girl.”

The vines released her. She would have fallen if Nightmare hadn’t been there to catch her, grabbing her by the arms and gently guiding her to the tile floor. Amethyst shivered all over, clawing at Nightmare’s dress blindly. Tears were running down her face and her tongue was thick in her mouth; her entire body ached and it felt like heaven.

“I’m going to raise the lights,” Nightmare murmured, carding her fingers through Amethyst’s wet hair. “Close your eyes, honey.”

Amethyst obeyed. Around her, the room brightened.

“You can open them now.”

Amethyst obeyed, and was startled. The room was perfectly undisturbed, all the vines and flowers exactly how they had been before Nightmare had appeared. The pool seemed to be the right depth and color. The only sign of their tryst were the puddles on the floor where Amethyst’s wet clothes were lying, and Nightmare herself, standing before Amethyst in a pretty black dress.

“What,” she said, too shocked to say anything else. She’d experienced the power of Nightmare’s mutation in the haunted house, but this went beyond that by far.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Nightmare said musingly, dropping to her knees beside Amethyst. “When I gained full control over these powers, I was ecstatic. I thought I could rule the world.”

“You could,” Amethyst said bluntly, but Nightmare was shaking her head.

“My powers only work on a few people at a time,” she admitted. “Four has been my maximum. I’m afraid I’m limited to, how would you put it? Terrorizing college students?”

Amethyst laughed.

“And weird sex shit, apparently,” she said. “Don’t forget about that.”

“I could never,” said Nightmare, and Amethyst curled up against Nightmare’s chest. Nightmare made a soft sound of surprise, but put her arms around her a second later. They were silent, listening to the drip-drip-drip of water trickling out of her hair.

“And after this?” Amethyst asked after several minutes had gone by.

“After this, we have to be enemies,” Nightmare said. “We can’t go on acting like Miranda and Amethyst now.”

She said it like it was ridiculous, but there was a tremulous note of hope in her voice. Amethyst would think about that later. For now—

“True,” she agreed. She unpeeled herself from Nightmare’s arms and stood. Stable, if a little shaky. She picked up her clothes and made a face.

“Let’s hope I don’t get arrested for obscenity, wearing these to get home,” she joked.

“I can take you,” Nightmare offered, and Amethyst paused.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said slowly. “If we’re going to be enemies.”

Another long pause, then Nightmare echoed, “True.”

Amethyst managed to wrap her torn jeans and shirt around herself like some kind of hobo-chic model, and tugged her neglected hoodie over her head—she’d taken it off right when she came into the aquatic house, and it had survived the vines.

“Well,” she said to Nightmare, who had been watching her the whole time. “This is it.”

“This is it,” Nightmare agreed, and Amethyst was struck with a compulsion. She took Nightmare by the hand and tugged her close, pressed her lips to hers. Nightmare’s mouth opened like a flower for her, and she drowned in the kiss.

“See you on the battle field,” she said when she finally pulled away, a little out of breath. “Nemesis.”

“My dearest nemesis,” Nightmare said, and brushed her fingers sweetly over Amethyst’s cheek. Between one blink and the next, she disappeared.

Amethyst stood in the aquatic house for a long time, alone (or maybe not), before trudging home.

 

 

 

**xi. Six Months Later**

“Problem in the Old District,” Metamorph said to Canary. She had shown up out of nowhere some months earlier. Metamorph didn’t question Cipher’s transformation into Canary, and Canary never breathed a word about the Pale Horse, and they’d quickly fallen back into their old patterns. They worked too well together to do anything but. “Some teenagers claimed to have seen aliens kidnap one of their friends. Up to us to investigate.”

“The Old District?” Canary asked absently. Metamorph made a noise of agreement in response. Canary was looking out to the west, over the district; there was a little tug on her mind, a wordless invitation.

“I can handle this one,” she said. “You stay on patrol.”

Metamorph’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why?”

“Just trust me,” Canary said, and, with a smile, let her nemesis into her mind.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Kinfolk_ is a minimalist lifestyle magazine with [a kind of odd background](http://www.racked.com/2016/3/14/11173148/kinfolk-lifestyle-magazines). That's a fun read if you have some time to kill.
> 
> The title is from the John Vanderslice song [Pale Horse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywgKTyUjZ4Q).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[audio] The Haunts of Daily Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12663897) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




End file.
